Paper Fruit

I had a great Christmas with the family! We did the big dinner and presents on Christmas Eve (I got a Tofu Xpress!!), then a low-key Christmas Day with just my mom and John. I made cinnamon rolls and Gardein sausage for breakfast and then we took a few walks in the nice weather, relaxed, and gobbled up leftovers for dinner which was fine by me. I’m exhausted after a week of partying with John’s family (not one, but two pallet-based bonfires in the back yard!), a trip to Busch Gardens for their Christmas Extravaganza, and everything else. Also, John got me the Blu-Ray of Re-Animator which I’m too excited about. Deleted scenes! Jeffrey Combs’ winsome faun-like face in high definition!

But! Christmas was also awesome for other reasons: A Pretty Mouth now has a brand-new Kindle edition that’s for sale on Amazon for the low, low price of $6.95. I’m really excited, as folks have been asking and asking about an ebook, and now there is one for purchase! Indeed, several friends were kind enough to let me know they bought it last night, so a big thank-you to those people. You know who you are!

AND … omg so yeah, just look at this:

HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS. Just behold the awesome that is “Herbert West in Love,” (the illustration) by Miko. Apparently my Blu-Ray was some sort of trumpeting angel of amazing Re-Animator stuff. Re-Animatormas. I couldn’t be happier—indeed, as I had no idea my story would be illustrated, I am doubly happy. The skull in the lamplight! The crotch bulge! The lace-up club shirt! Oh, Herbert.

Oh, and duh, I should mention that this illustration means “Herbert West in Love” is now available for your reading pleasure over at The Lovecraft eZine. People seem to be enjoying it so far, which is exciting! Thanks to Mike Davis for selecting it for the 20th issue. You can read it for free, which rules! And/or you could wait for the Kindle/Nook edition in a few days and support the eZine which would be awesome of you, as just look at the work they’re doing. It’s awesome. I also hear there will be a podcast edition of the eZine, including “Herbert,” which I plan on downloading and listening to on the plane when I fly back to Colorado. This marks my very first audio edition of anything I’ve published, which is … anyways, yeah, I’m a little emotional. I love this story—it’s about Herbert West kissing boys, of course it’s a favored child—so the fact it’s receiving the deluxe treatment is pretty goddamn awesome.

SO! Merry fucking Christmas to me, me me me me me. But so as not to be totally selfish, here’s something for you, dear readers: A Re-Animatormas cocktail. Top shelf shit, this. Sweet, herbal, nutty, citrusy, and boozy enough to lower your inhibitions when it comes to reaching out and inappropriately touching that special dead someone . It’s a Christmas miracle!

Revivification

2 oz Armagnac
1 oz Green Chartreuse
1 tsp Disaronno

Pour all ingredients into a mixing pitcher. Stir vigorously with lots of ice until cold, then strain into a small snifter. Float a lemon wheel on top. Inhale. Sip.

So! Jesse tried all the cocktails that weren’t actually poisonous, and has decided that while he would like to send everyone a book, he must stick by the rules of the contest as stated and pick some winners. So he did. See below.

Jesse’s going to go to the post office on Wednesday, so before Wednesday morning you should email him your mailing address at Jesse(dot)Bullington[nospam]@gmail.com (remove the nospam; put in a dot for the dot, of course). Latecomers will probably be tolerated by him way more than they would if I was in charge, but I’m headed out of town so he has to do all the work.

So here’s what you’ve all been waiting for: Jesse’s “tasting notes,” plus acknowledgment of the winners! Read on….

The Enterprise of Death by Paracelsus: “This is poisonous, so I didn’t try it!”

Will Sherman’s Two Entries: “I didn’t have a dog skull, gay or otherwise (?), so I just didn’t try these. The Grossbart is pretty funny though.”

Awa’s Lament by Bryan Brunner: “This will put hair on the inside of your chest.”

The Soldier and the Witch by Selena Chambers: “My teeth! They might fall out from the sweet, but it’s soooo sweet.”

A Fool’s Gold by Andy R.: “The Herbsaint tames this Yellow Parrot admirably, and the gold dust classes it up!” RUNNER UP!

The Little Death by Matthew C.: “This is pretty good!”  RUNNER UP! 

The Hegel and the Manfried by John Gove: “Nicsh joerb, friend.” Then he fell over.

Crotch Rot by Kirsten Alene and Cameron Pierce: “GRAND PRIZE! Points awarded for filthiness of name, filthiness of color, and the fact that this one was the best tasting drink.”

The Bloody Necromancer by Gina G.: “Grape party! Pretty good.” RUNNER UP! 

The Damned Sailor by Aaron Z.: “Another good cocktail with beer! This one didn’t punk me by exploding when I shook it either; I’m looking at YOU Kirsten Alene and Cameron.” RUNNER UP!

De Bloedig Biesbosch by Raechel D.: “My wife made a cocktail!”

So there you have it. Them. Whatever! I’m literally packing while writing this so Jesse will do a more gracious send-off to this contest later this week. Check his blog for followups. I’ll miss all of you, but keep your eyes peeled—I might pop in as I think the ebook of A Pretty Mouth is imminent (save some dollars, holiday shoppers!) and the Lovecraft eZine people tell me the December issue, featuring my tale “Herbert West in Love” is out on the 21st. Huzzah! Oh god I have so much to do I have to get off the internet.

Been a while since I did a publicity roundup for A Pretty Mouth! Things have been going great with the novel so far, and while (regrettably) I still haven’t been able to pin down when an ebook will be available for purchase I’ve heard my publisher is “working on it” for those of you waiting on a digital copy. I’ll make a big announcement when it happens as I know many people (other than myself) have expressed an interest in seeing the book in a digital format.

Anyways! Amazon has a few new reviews, bringing my book up to eight (five-star!) reviews:

A delightful romp through the macabre and depraved, made all the more appealing by the author’s obvious enthusiasm and gleeful verve. … She has a fantastic tone that is equal parts horror and wonder, and she managed to capture my particular favorite flavor of corrupt degeneracy with flair and titillation. Spot on!

and

A PRETTY MOUTH is a book of sensual prose, telling dark, sexy stories. Yes, a mix of sex and horror. Not so much violence, but the creepy edge of horror. … there’s something exciting about the discovery as well as something deliciously disturbing about it. I recommend it highly.

Also, Innsmouth Free Press was kind enough to review my collection!

Tanzer’s greatest asset is the sheer glee of her stories. She seems to be in it for the fun of it. And, because she is having fun, it is difficult not to have fun with her. … Ultimately, Tanzer takes a leap and I admire any writer who does. There is too much safe stuff on bookshelves. Tanzer’s wild collection, though, is not afraid to crash. Tanzer has a swagger of her own which shows in these stories and that, more than anything, is the drawing point for the book.

Finally, a colleague and friend of mine, John Glover, wrote me an early Christmas present in the form of a review/mythology for my person:

 The legend says that Molly Tanzer was born on a starless night in the middle of a battlefield, and that when the sun rose, the ground was carpeted with detached limbs and excavated fundaments. In the middle of this lay a babe, swaddled in black satin, attended by leather-masked beasts with hands of stone and iron. As the sun flew high, reedy pipes wailed and the emissaries of a cult that had long awaited her arrival rode thither out of the east, and strange patterns formed in the dust in the sky.

Hell yes! He goes on to talk more about the collection:

Having said it already in more flowery format, I’ll now say simply that Molly Tanzer is the real deal. A Pretty Mouth is a weighty and strange collection, and one that promises to repay more than one reading. From adroit turns of phrase to morally complex characters to simply good stories, this book has much to offer.

I remain amazed by the response to my collection of weird dirty stories. It’s thrilling to have written something people seem to like, and doubly thrilling that people are taking it in the spirit in which it was intended.

All this, along with the lovely response I’ve received from my live chat with the Lovecraft eZine people? I may faint, bring me my smelling salts!

I suppose what I might be getting at is that you could do worse than pick up my collection for the nerd/weirdo in your life for whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year… ahem.

Oh! And don’t forget, my Folly of the World giveaway contest is still going on! You have a few more days—weekend days if you catch my drift—to come up with an appropriate cocktail and try to win a copy of Jesse Bullington’s latest opus. Get thee to a liquor store! I’m working on mine, though I shan’t be formally entering the contest (I have a copy; I just like making the world a little more bubbly whenever I can), so you have no excuse. So far I’ve mixed Jesse two entries, though I shall not reveal which two. Both were good, though one was so strong Jesse described it, after a sip, as “putting hair on the inside of his chest.” A few new entries have made this an interesting race for the taste so you might should think long and hard before submitting. Or just mix a bunch of shit together on a lark and take your chances. There’s worse ways to spend an afternoon!

Don’t forget about The Folly of the World cocktail contest that’s going on right now! Two Three entries so far, one of which is poisonous, so if you folks want more books by Jesse it would behoove you to submit something…

Last night on the Lovecraft eZine Chat so graciously hosted by Mike Davis, I, perhaps not unexpectedly, got talking about my passion for 18th century lit, specifically women’s novels which reference slavery/the slave trade, a topic which took up most of my classes for my Master’s. Somewhat more unexpectedly, a viewer wrote in to ask what might be some interesting titles fitting that description that interested readers could check out! Holy moly, how awesome! 18th century novels are a passion of mine, and I think they’re under-read, so I was over the moon.

That said, rather than rattle off a bunch of titles for people to scribble down, I promised to post a list of some of my favorites that deal with Caribbean slavery, the middle passage, women’s interest in abolition/amelioration, etc. So, here is that list! It’s just a starting point, dear listeners and readers, thus once you plow through these, hit me up and I’ll dig up some even more obscure titles. And ones that do waaaaay more than that lone shout-out in Mansfield Park to the slave trade that always gets all the attention. Whee!

don’t you just love how this is EVERY COVER of EVERY BOOK written by a woman before 1900?

Belinda, Maria Edgeworth. 1801. Technically 19th century but whatever. Also features an eyebrow-raising parody of Mary Wollstonecraft, so that’s entertaining.

A Description of Millenium Hall [sic] and The History of Sir George Ellison. Sarah Scott. Love these books. So cray. Sarah Scott was really interesting so make sure to read the critical introductions, class!

The Adventures of David Simple. Sarah Fielding. This is long and weird but there’s a whole Jamaica connection, though one a bit less direct than the three above titles.

The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph. Frances Sherridan. This is probably my fave 18th c. novel, transatlantic connection or no! Glad to see it’s in print again. My copy is hideous and full of errors due to being a scan from some old microfiche. The things I do for love…

The History of Mary Prince. Mary Prince. Not a novel, but a fascinating account of the life of a liberated Jamaican slave in her own words (allegedly; again, the critical introduction is really interesting).

Oroonoko. Aphra Behn. A classic. “Long” 18th c. rather than the regular kind, but highly influential on later works about slavery.

Oh, and because I talked about it for way too long:

Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World. Trevor Burnard. One of the most disturbing books I’ve ever read, but highly informative about the conditions of 18th century Jamaican slavery.

This list might not have the best, or most representative books written during the (long) 18th century, but they are on the topic as asked! Hope they’re enjoyed. I babbled about a similar topic back when Historical Lovecraft debuted a million billion years ago, so you can check that out, too, if you like. Cheers, and thanks for the question! Super-fun to look up all these gems and think about the horror of humanity once again. It had been too long!

Two things! Both Lovecraftian, both—interestingly enough—related to The Lovecraft eZine!

First: I’ll be doing one of those eZine chats this Sunday, at 6pm EST (4 my time here in the wooly wilds of Colorado). If you’d like to tune in, you can go to this link and there will be information. If you’d like to tune in but you’re busy on Sunday afternoon, it will be recorded and uploaded to youtube so the internet can see forever how awkward I am.

Second: I’ll have a story in the December issue of The Lovecraft eZine! “Herbert West in Love” is a Christmas tale to warm your heart. Over a bunsen burner. (Cue Crypt Keeper laughter.) I really like this piece; it was extremely fun to write. Also, I received my single favorite editorial remark of all time regarding the story, when Mike very politely messaged me to see if I would be willing to “remove the word ‘cock’ from “Herbert West in Love,” as it will be appearing in the Christmas issue.” I (of course) complied, as I’m America’s Sweetheart, and apparently the scene in question added a few Xes to Xmas, if you know what I mean.

Many, many thanks to the excellent Mike Davis for both opportunities! This will be a fun and busy weekend for me, starting tonight. Remember, if you’re in the Boulder-Denver area, Shaolin Hung Mei Kung Fu will be performing our dragon at both Parades this weekend! Denver’s tonight, Boulder’s tomorrow, so get your scarves and hats and now-cool ugly Christmas sweaters and come on out!

Tomorrow evening from 6:00 to 7:30 PM, I’ll be doing a reading with Stephen Graham Jones at Folsom St. Coffee, at the corner of Folsom and Canyon in Boulder, CO. So, if you’re around/in the area, please come on by! And maybe don’t bring your kids, I’ll be reading something with, inevitably, potty-language.

Also! If you’re in Denver or Boulder, Shaolin Hung Mei Kung Fu will be performing our dragon (nine or eleven-person, depending on how many people come!) this Friday and Saturday at the Parades of Lights. Denver is Friday night; Boulder, Saturday. I’ll be playing cymbals! So that’s awesome. Our new dragon is a real beauty, as you can see, and I’m proud to be part of the performance. I don’t have any info for Boulder but we’ll be, I think, 9th in line for Denver.

I usually don’t leave the house after sundown (except for kung fu class, of course) so this is serious business.

So Orrin Grey was kind enough to tag me as part of this whole “The Next Big Thing” thing that’s goin’ around the flippity-flappity intarwebz these days. And I know, given the title, that the premise is to talk about one’s NEXT big thing, but as my (hopefully) next big thing is still in agent-revision mode, I’m going to talk about my newest big thing. More below!

1. What is the title of your book?

A Pretty Mouth, which is sort-of a collection and sort-of a novel told via short story, just came out in September from LFP. All the stories are about different generations of a degenerate, incestuous, aristocratic English family, and each piece is (to a certain extent) a pastiche of a popular literary style of the time.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I wrote a story, “The Infernal History of the Ivybridge Twins” for an anthology called Historical Lovecraft that was being put out by Innsmouth Free Press. Somehow they accepted it! Anyways, at the time I envisioned the story as a standalone picaresque about incestuous twin necromancers, but when I was watching some Blackadder the Third on Netflix one evening, I got an itch to do a Blackadder-style treatment of the Calipash family. Thus, when Cameron Pierce contacted me (after the original “Twins” story was re-published in The Book of Cthulhu, ed. Ross Lockhart) asking if I’d thought about doing more Calipash Twins tales, I had a pitch oddly ready to go. Fate!

3. What genre does your book fall under?

Powell’s apparently shelved it under “Horror,” but I dunno? LFP is a Bizarro imprint, and since that’s as broad as any other genre I’ll stick with that. But I shall note that there is a definite Lovecraftian streak throughout the entire work.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

There’s a zillion characters in the book, as it’s a collection! But some things are certain: The first story, “A Spotted Trouble at Dolor-on-the-Downs” is a Jeeves and Wooster tribute, and thus I would do my best to recruit Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie to reprise their roles in there, because they’re the best. Then I’d probably cast Lena Headey and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Alethea and Alastair Fitzroy as they already have an excellent rapport going as rich, entitled twins who like to sex up one another all the time.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

The tagline on the back is “The Secret History meets Re-Animator in this tale of sex and science” which sums up the title novella about as well as anyone could in one sentence! By which I mean, if that description makes you excited, you’ll probably like the biggest chunk of the book (and hopefully the rest!).

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Neither. A Pretty Mouth was published by LFP press. As for my next book, I will take this opportunity to be all excited again about my recent signing with the delightful Cameron McClure of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. She now represents me and will be shopping my novel Come and Take the Cure, a weird Western, once I get her those aforementioned revisions.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

Well, this isn’t easily answered as “Ivybridge Twins” was written in October of 2010, if memory serves, and the rest was written between, I think, November of 2011 and June of 2012.

Usually I write at a nigh-glacial pace but the novella I did in two weeks. The muse, she and I hung out for a while there, but she then moved on and I’m now back to pulling words out my brain like teeth from an exceedingly strong-gummed person.

8. What other books would you compare this to within your genre?

That’s tough as Bizarro is genre-spanning, and the individual stories within my collection, as I said, take some part of their from and content from time-appropriate literary genres. Here’s a brief rundown:

• “A Spotted Trouble at Dolor on the Downs”: Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories

• “The Hour of the Tortoise”: Victorian pornographic novels like those serialized in The Pearl; Gothic nonsense like Wuthering Heights

• “The Infernal History of The Ivybridge Twins”: Tom Jones, The Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph

• A Pretty Mouth: Restoration comedy like “The Rover” as imagined by John Huges

• “Damnatio Memoriae”: This story I mainly wrote to piss off Robert E. Howard’s ghost

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I have no idea, other than it was what I wanted to be writing at the time, so I did it.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

The cover. Just look at that shit. It rules, and it would make a lovely addition to anyone’s bookshelf, frankly. Buy it for everyone you know! Please!

Okay! Thanks, Orrin—this was a lot of fun. As for who I’m tagging, I’m only tagging one writer as she’s worth five at the very least: S.P. Miskowski, author of the Shirley Jackson Award-nominated Knock Knock, and the novella Delphine Dodd. Check out her blog this time next week for her Next Big Thing!

Whee! Today, Alan M. Clark and I are doing a blog-exchange to co-promote our new titles, both out through LFP! Alan’s here, and I’m over on his blog, “The Imagination Fully Dilated.” Pop on over there afterwards, why don’t you?

***

I met Molly Tanzer online after she read and commented on my historical fiction novel, Of Thimble and Threat: The Life of a Jack the Ripper Victim. This year Molly and I discovered that we were both writing within historical settings, and we agreed to serve as readers for each others’ developing work. Both Molly’s book, A Pretty Mouth, and my novel, A Parliament of Crows, are historical fiction, both inspired by real events within history. Both books tell dark, disturbing tales, hers an erotic horror, mine a southern gothic. A Pretty Mouth is sort of a novel in short and long fiction set in England during several different periods, much of it in the 1600s, and A Parliament of Crows is set in various locations within the United States between the time of the American Civil War and the end of the first decade of the twentieth century.

The fun of writing within historical settings is that it’s a bit like time travel. The period a writer chooses for a story will define the characters in it to some extent. Obviously, some experiences we have today are not possible for characters set within a time, say, 100 or 500 years ago. This can present real limitations unless the writer is willing to learn about the period and really open up the character’s world, discover the possibilities, and share that with the reading audience. That’s the time travel I’m talking about. No matter the period, the emotional characteristics of human beings are just as subtle and complex as those of human beings today. The everyday realities and events that shape their feelings and motivations can be very different, however. In creating characters, I try to take advantage of the similarities and the differences, setting up parallels and contrasts with what we know today to express something about human experience. If done right, a reader gets to time-travel too, experiencing a long lost world through the eyes of a character they can understand emotionally, even if the character’s feelings and outlook are shaped by a different time.

A Pretty Mouth was so well realized that it sent me back in time, and allowed me to view a bizarre and terrifying world through the eyes of fascinating, very human characters.

Another thing Molly and I discovered about our writing this year was that both of us were writing about twins.  A Pretty Mouth has a supernatural genetic line of evil twins. My novel, A Parliament of Crows, has one set of evil twins whose connection to one another has a supernatural aspect. I thought my twins could use a hint of long, dark genetic history, and suggested to Molly that we might create a connection. Adding more evil twins to her character’s lineage was desirable to her, so she agreed to creating a tiny link between the projects with one or two sentences in each. To get there, we traded messages via facebook “chat,” looking for a solution that was both minimal, but undeniable. I had fun, and I think she did as well. [I did indeed! –Molly] I could almost hear her laughing in her messages. The lines we added had to be of a sort that would not confuse and would not distract a reader from the story at hand, but would be an Easter egg for those who read both books. I’m curious to see who will be the first to notice.

—Alan M. Clark

MileHiCon was really fun, mostly! Mostly. But rather than dwell on the things that weren’t altogether rad, here’s a quick roundup of the highlights:

• My reading went well! I did a few selections from A Pretty Mouth, including the entire first chapter of the novella. People seemed to enjoy it, so huzzah. My co-reader, Travis Heermann, also read, but he was way more high-tech, as he read off his iPhone and had like, actual bookstands for his book. Well played, Heermann. Well played.
• I moderated a panel on Victorian/19th c. sexuality, which went pretty okay! Things got a little rowdy, which yeah of course. I particularly enjoyed the direction Cherie Priest’s vast knowledge about prostitution in Seattle took the discussion. It’s possible I got a bit verbose on various 19th century pornographic texts, but looking around and seeing many people scribbling titles was a cheap thrill. Victorian porn for the all!
• I saw many people I knew and many more that I didn’t. It was fun reconnecting with old friends and making new ones, as always!
• I ate some amazing Indian food at Masalaa with Jason Heller and Jesse Bullington.
• I dressed up as Herbert West—Reanimator. Not a single person knew who I was!
• Jesse and I, in a fit of madness perhaps, picked up a bottle of “Scoresby’s Very Rare” blended Scotch whiskey for 7 dollars, to bring to the con … mostly as a joke. Really! But it all got drunk at an extremely rowdy party on Saturday night that left me crippled for …
• The panel on “Humor and Horror” which I barely made it through, honestly. That I was upright and didn’t say anything too embarrassing is a miracle.
• But at least I’d (mostly) recovered by the time I lurched my way onto the “Strong Women in SF” panel. I may or may not have spoken passionately, and somewhat at length, about how essentialist notions of gender are wrong and obsolete and hurtful. I won’t laundry-list some of the more eyebrow-raising things said on that panel by other participants, because water under the bridge and all that. Let’s just say I left feeling like there’s still a serious need for those “Strong Women in X Kind of Genre Fiction” panels.
• Also, I sold every single copy of A Pretty Mouth that I consigned to a local bookstore, so fuck yes Team A Pretty Mouth, and thanks to all of you who bought the book.

So yeah, that’s pretty much it! And if all that wasn’t rad enough, A Pretty Mouth has been getting more (extremely kind) reviews.

The Next Best Book Blog, whilst I was at MileHiCon, posted a meaty and wonderful review. The summation was very flattering indeed (many thanks!):

If you think A Pretty Mouth sounds like a lot of fun, it is. Molly’s got a style unlike any other’s. It’s one that doesn’t take itself too seriously while at the same time impressing upon the reader not to take it too lightly. Beware the enemy, even when it turns out to be you.

Next, Jamie Grefe posted his review over at The Carnage Conservatory. There’s something about my book that seems to induce people to become almost … poetic when they review it. It’s really awesome, frankly, to see people responding in literary ways to my writing. Much more than I was hoping for, which was to give folks a few chuckles and inspire them to revisit, maybe, Wodehouse’s Jeeves stories. But instead, more awesomely:

You are entrenched in a family history much stranger and more gruesome than your own: Calipash, octopus, blood-soul, Roman.
You need a drink.

Last, but certainly not least, my friend Elise (E. Catherine) Tobler reviewed my book on her blog. In epistolary format. That alone would be the highest possible compliment, but she goes on to say:

I write to inform you of a book which has crossed my hands–a book that will disrupt your working hours and most certainly your nights, because once you read these…we shall call them stories, though they seem rather to be historical transcriptions, if you take my meaning…you will never find sleep’s seductive embrace easily again.

AND

The voice of this book–this is what may capture one, draw one in. I think of all the readers who have yet to discover this lady’s works (surely there are more, as there are stars in the heavens) and I shudder, sirs. I shudder. That they shall encounter these worlds, and “characters” for the first time yet–oh, to have that pleasure again. Our world slips away under a veil of fog when one opens this tome; one is drawn wholly and effortlessly into these tales and it is an effort to come back to what we know to be true. (Or do we? I confess to confusion on that point.)

I’m seriously swooning, but that might be old age creeping up on me. Yes, my friends, I am turning 31 in only a few days! The stars are right and all that jazz. I don’t want much, just to be a modestly successful indie author (you can help make that happen!) and possibly get a new tattoo.

Oh, and cake!

MileHiCon! It’s that time of the year again, when nerds of all sorts descend upon Denver to wear costumes, go to panels on steampunk, Star Wars, and—looking at the schedule—“Name that Sci Fi Tune.” I had a great time last year, so I’m looking forward to the craziness. I might even dress up, since last year my Han Solo produced many satisfactory interactions, such as two Klingons buying me a beer and teaching me about honor.

But I’ll be doing stuff other than wandering the halls admiring cosplay! Here’s my schedule of events:

Friday, 7 PM in Wind River B: My reading. I’m paired up with Travis Heermann. I’ll probably do some selections from, unsurprisingly, A Pretty Mouth. Oh, and bring 10 bucks if you want to buy a copy! I’ll have ’em.

Friday, 10 PM in Mesa Verde B: The Love and Sex Lives of the Victorians. I’m moderating this. Maybe don’t bring your kids? I personally feel awkward talking about Victorian hand-wringing over childhood masturbation when there are wee ones present.

Sunday, 1 PM in Wind River B: Comedic Elements in Horror. Jesse Bullington’s moderating and Stephen Graham Jones is on the panel, too. Should be a good time!

Sunday, 3 PM in Mesa Verde B: Strong Women in SF. Cheri Priest will be on this panel, too, along with many fine folks.

 I’ll probably be in the bar, otherwise? Please say hi if you see me! I’m looking forward most to seeing old friends and meeting new ones. Aww.